When Worlds Collide
by Yoshichao
Summary: You know something is up when characters from Mario to Fairy Tail wake up on an unknown planet with sections of their worlds smashed into one. Will they be trapped like this for eternity?
1. Prologue

YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, I'M EDITING THIS PIECE OF CRAP.

*Ahem* Anyways, welcome to the story thing! New reader? Well, you get the pleasure to read this for the first time. Old reader? Well, you get the pleasure of reading the cleaner edition of this! Yes, we even have new headers, footers, and author notes!

**Everyone: **YAY!

So, I don't own most of this story. Anything associated with Xalcus I own. The following series I do not own:

Super Mario Bros.  
Sonic The Hedgehog  
Legend of Zelda  
Kirby  
Kingdom Hearts  
Detective Conan/Magic Kaito  
Fairy Tail  
KuroShitsuji  
Pokemon  
Death Note  
Leven Thumps  
One Piece  
Danny Phantom  
Bobobo-Bo bo-bobo  
Pikmin  
Artemis Fowl

Yes, I plan to work at least cameos of ALL of these series. Everything before Pokemon is guaranteed to be in this story. The other series only make cameos and may switch as I continue to write this (mainly Death Note or Bobobo-Bo bo-bobo, everything else is set in stone). So, if you see something you like, stay tuned~!

P.S.: This is actually the order they will be introduced. XD First eight in this chapter, next eight in four and beyond.

Also, some of the timeline may not be "up-to-date" so just bare with me. This story is really old.

Lastly, POSSIBLE SPOIIIIILERRRRRRS! That is all.

AND SO, THE STORY BEGINS . . .

* * *

Space. Life's greatest mystery. Each universe is distinct as well as every world. Each dimension could look fairly similar yet be so different. But how many people have lived to know about all of this?

Within a certain universe, there was a small, blue and green planet. For billions of years, the so-called "intelligent life" that existed on this particular planet believed this planet was the only planet that could support life. And for billions of years, these people were completely wrong.

Within this universe, there was another small planet that would appear black and white if it was actually visible. This small planet was known as Xalcus and sustained life with no problems. But why was this planet able to do this?

Inside the core of this planet was a spherical room that housed a single soul filled with darkness and hatred, for this soul was trapped here for eternity, only able to control the instincts of his creations back on the surface.

But this soul had learned to be patient over the last hundred billion years. It would have its revenge, even if it had to wait an eternity to obtain it.

And so, it manipulated its shadows to travel through time and space, doing everything it could to become free once more . . .

~xxx~

"MAIL CALL!"

Luigi walked out of the house and went over to the mailbox. He took out the letter that had just been stuck inside and brought it back into his home.

"Hey, Mario, we got some mail from the Princess."

Mario looked up from his newspaper with the heading 'KOOPA KING VANISHES?' and turned his focus to his younger brother.

"Hey, Luigi, this says Bowser has vanished from the Mushroom Kingdom! Even his minions can't find him!"

"Eh? Really?" Luigi placed the letter on the table and looked at the newspaper Mario was holding.

_TOAD TOWN NEWS  
KOOPA KING VANISHES?_

_Today, the residents of Toad Town claimed to see the brute's minions walking aimlessly through the town. When we approached one of them, they said their king has mysteriously vanished one morning and hasn't returned since. Are our King Koopa troubles over or is our villain planning his next strike? Watch for our next issue for more detail!_

The Mario Brothers stared at the newspaper in disbelief. Was Bowser truly out of their lives? As they stood there, bamboozled, they didn't notice dark shadows weaving through the floorboards and filling the room . . .

~xxx~

Sonic The Hedgehog raced through a loop in Green Hill Zone. His best friend Tails had just rebuilt his plane, the Cyclone, and had discovered how to use even more of the Chaos Emerald's energy to power it. He had agreed to come help him test it out.

As he began to near Tails' workshop, a red blur came speeding towards him. Sonic did a backflip out of the way as Knuckles the Echidna stopped in front of him.

"All right, Sonic. I know you stole the Master Emerald, hand it over."

Sonic rolled his eyes. "What? Knuckles, did Eggman trick you again?"

Knuckles raised his fists, ready to use force if necessary. "First off, I was NOT tricked! Second, I haven't seen Eggman in days."

"Then who told you?"

"None of your business!"

Knuckles dashed at Sonic and tried to punch him. Sonic leaped out of the way, not having the patience to deal with his gullible friend.

"Sorry, Knucklehead, no time to fight with you right now. I promised to meet with Tails to test his new plane."

"Hey, get back here!"

Sonic ran as fast as he could, leaving Knuckles far behind him. He skidded to a stop right in front of an orange two-tailed fox about five seconds later, who seemed to be putting the finishing touches a plane.

"Hey Tails! You done the plane?"

Tails looked over at Sonic and smiled. "Yeah! It should fly much better than before now!"

Sonic looked at the plane. It looked almost exactly like before. Painted blue with two orange tails painted on the side.

"So it's supposed to fly faster than before?"

"Yup! It may look the same on the outside but on the inside is an improved engine to enhance the energy of the Chaos Emerald. You see, all I had to do was-"

"Yeah, you did great, how about we test it now?" The blue blur said, not wanting to hear Tails's techno-babble. His friend's explanations always made his head hurt.

"Alright. Let me just make sure everything is in perfect condition," Tails said as he walked to the front of the plane. He stopped and his eyes widened once he noticed the propeller area.

"Something wrong?" asked Sonic, walking over beside him. Inside the emerald-shaped glass casing in the middle of the propeller was a black smoky substance and no visible Chaos Emerald.

"Um . . . Is it supposed to be like tha-"

Before Sonic could finish his sentence, the glass casing started cracking and shattered, letting out the black smoke. The smoke began to spread and cover the area, causing Sonic and Tails to start coughing uncontrollably as their bodies went numb. Before they could do anything else, the two of them blacked out.

~xxx~

Link walked up the steps of Hyrule Castle, the guards letting him pass by. After the umpteenth time of saving the land of Hyrule, the blond Hylian hero in green needed a break. He decided visiting Princess Zelda would be a good idea for now. Besides, there wasn't much else to do until he was needed again.

Link walked through the many corridors and rooms. Guards were placed here and there but something felt different. Link didn't know what it was but something was just . . . Off.

Link shook off the feeling and continued to walk. This was silly, there's nothing wrong. He must've been too used to the hero business.

The hero in green walked into the throne room. Now he knew what felt wrong.

It was empty.

No guards, no Zelda. The only thing off was a note resting on the throne.

Link started to walk over to the throne where the note sat. As he reached out to grab the note, a shadowy hand shot out of the ground and grabbed Link's arm. He struggled, completely weaponless since he had returned the Master Sword to its pedestal. More hands shot out of the ground and slowly began to pull Link under, forcing him into unconsciousness.

~xxx~

It was snack time in Dream Land and Kirby was getting ready to eat a strawberry cake. It had been lazy days lately for the eight inch tall pink puffball.

Almost too lazy.

But Kirby didn't care. He could eat his cake in peace and that's all that mattered!

Before Kirby could take a bite of the cake, a small pink haired fairy in red clothes - about two thirds the size of Kirby - flew over to him. Kirby recognized it as his friend Ribbon. She gestured for him to follow, seeming to be freaking out a bit over something. Kirby quickly inhaled his cake and ran after her.

The two ended up deep in the forest. Ribbon stopped flying and looked ahead. Kirby stopped too, confused. He looked around. Nothing seemed to be wrong.

Ribbon slowly turned around and looked at Kirby. Her eyes were black and she had a grin on her face. Before Kirby could react, she exploded into shadows which grabbed Kirby and pulled him under the surface of the planet.

~xxx~

_"Nothing's changed, huh?"  
"Nope. Nothing will."  
"What a small world."  
"But part of one that's much bigger."  
"Yeah."  
". . . Hey Riku . . . what do think it was - the door to the light?"  
"This."  
"This?"  
"Yeah. It's always closer than you think."  
"Sora! Riku!"  
"Hey, what's up?"  
"Look."  
"From the King?"_

Sora reread the letter that Kairi found in the bottle. King Mickey has actually made contact with them! It seemed like just yesterday him and Riku saw the light that brought them back to Destiny Islands.

Speaking of which, where were Riku and Kairi? Sora sat up and looked around. He had been lying on the beach for awhile and it began to seem odd to him. But why? Was it because of how peaceful it seemed?

Sora stood up and stretched. He was going to look for his two best friends and hang out - like old times.

Before Sora could make a step, shadowy black creatures began appearing around Sora. Heartless? How did they get _here_?

Sora summoned his Keyblade and began to swing at the Heartless. To his surprise, the Keyblade went right THROUGH the Heartless. Before he could question it anymore, each Heartless exploded into shadowy particles one by one and surrounded Sora, forcing him to slip from consciousness.

~xxx~

_"Who are you . . . again? It's weird . . . I feel like I'm forgetting something really important."  
"You'll be . . . better off now . . . Roxas."  
"Am I . . . The one who did this to you?"  
"No . . . It was my choice . . . to go away now. Better than that, than to do nothing . . . and let Xemnas have his way. I belong with Sora. And now, I am going back . . . to be with him. Roxas . . . I need you . . . to do me a favor. All those hearts that I've captured . . . Kingdom Hearts. Set them free."  
"Kingdom Hearts . . . Free them?"  
"It's too late . . . for me to undo my mistakes. But you can't let Xemnas . . . have Kingdom Hearts. You can't.  
". . ."_  
_"Good-bye, Roxas. See you again. . . . I'm glad . . I got to meet you. Oh . . . and of course, Axel, too. You're both my best friends. Never forget . . That's the truth."  
"No! Xion . . . Who else will I have ice cream with?"_

Roxas sat on top of his favourite spot in Twilight Town - the clock tower. He ate some sea-salt ice cream as he thought about that memory over and over. He just woke up here not too long ago and that was one of the first things he remembered. Shouldn't he be a part of Sora? He _is_ his Nobody. And why did he remember Xion so well now? He used to have to concentrate really hard just to remember her name. What was going on?

Roxas looked at his ice cream. It seemed like so long since him, Axel, and Xion had ice cream together right in this spot while watching the sunset. But now, it was only him. No Organization XIII, no Xion, no Sora. Only him.

Did this mean he was his own person now?

Roxas looked out at the sunset, still puzzled about the whole situation. He had just finished his ice cream and was about to stand up and leave when a familiar female voice was heard behind him.

"You did it Roxas. You and Sora stopped Xemnas from getting Kingdom Hearts."

Roxas turned around and saw a girl with short black hair and blue eyes. She still wore the black cloak from the Organization.

"X-Xion?" Roxas stammered in shock. He couldn't believe his eyes.

"The sunset is as beautiful as always . . . Just like I remember."

"Xion, how are you here? Did something happen to Sora again?"

Xion smiled at Roxas, "Don't worry; I'm sure he's fine. As for me . . ."

Roxas gave Xion a confused look when she paused and a tear rolled down her cheek.

"I'm sorry Roxas. Please forgive me," Xion said quietly, "No matter what, you're still my best friend. That's the truth, really."

Before Roxas could ask what she was talking about, he began to feel heavy and rather tired. As he tried to stand up, he fell off the clock tower, closing his eyes and falling unconscious before knowing if he hit the ground or not.  
_  
_~xxx~

"HE'S HEADING FOR THE BASEMENT, GO GO GO!"

Kaito Kid ran up the stairs leading to the roof. The police were such fools; they fell for the "Inflatable Kid" again! He'd be long gone before they realized their mistake. He yanked open the door and found himself face-to-face with a kid with short brown hair, blue eyes, and a pair of glasses.

"You may have fooled those policemen but you can't fool me, Kid, The Phantom Thief," the kid said with a grin. Kid smirked back at him, the wind whipping his cape wildly in the air.

"I suppose I can't, Conan. Or should I say "high school detective, Kudo Shinichi"?"

"Heh, Conan is fine until my body is back to normal," said Conan, "Anyways, you've finally been caught. Your thieving days are over."

Kaito Kid tossed the large pink amethyst in his hand up and down. "Kaito Kid has remained uncaught for over eight years and he's going to stay that way until further notice."

Kid's hang glider opened up on his back and he jumped off the building. He held the amethyst in his hand and glided over the city, watching as the clouds slowly moved away from the moon.

"You aren't getting away that easy!"

Kid looked back and saw Conan holding onto his leg. "Baka!" Kid yelled, "We'll both fall if there's too much weight!"

The moon peaked out from the clouds, lighting up the area a bit. Kid held up the amethyst to the moonlight. To his surprise, the amethyst began to crack. Thinking he finally found what his father died for, a huge grin started to cover his face. Suddenly, the amethyst exploded into dark particles which seemed to multiply themselves every nanosecond. The darkness squirmed through the air and cut through the strap that kept Kid attached to the hang glider. Then the small particles surrounded both Kaito Kid and Conan as they fell, making both go unconscious before they could react.  
_  
_~xxx~

_"_Hey, Lucy, let's go on a mission!"

Natsu sat at one of the tables in the guild "Fairy Tail". He spoke with his fellow teammate Lucy with a big smile on his face. Natsu was always ready for a mission! His best friend, Happy, who was a blue walking and talking cat, sat on the table and smiled as well.

"Are we going to actually _accept_ the reward this time? I need the money to pay my rent . . ." Lucy sighed and thought about it. They often didn't accept the rewards for the missions they did since they usually ended with something other than what the mission asked. They were told to burn a book, they gave it back to the owner and didn't collect the pay. They had stolen an S-Ranked job but didn't get the reward since they had been caught. And it was all Natsu's fault. He said it would "ruin Fairy Tail's reputation".

"Geez, Lucy," said Happy, "Stop thinking about money so much! That's greedy!"

"I WON'T HAVE A HOUSE IF I DON'T THINK ABOUT MONEY!" Lucy said angrily. How could those two be so laid back at a time like this?

"Haha, calm down, Lucy," said a guy who just took a seat. He had navy blue hair and only boxers on.

"Gray! Put some clothes on before you sit here!"

"Huh?" Gray looked down. "ACK, NOT AGAIN!"

Natsu began laughing at Gray, who reacted angrily. "You looking for a fight?"

"Yeah, I am!" Both got up and started to use magic simultaneously.

"ICE MAKE-"

"FIRE DRAGON'S-"

"Hello everyone, I'm back."

A woman with crimson red hair and red eyes walked into the Guild. She wore silver armor and a long-ish black skirt. As soon as they noticed her, Natsu and Gray quickly put their arms over each others' shoulders and smiled.

"Hey, Erza!" Gray said, attempting to act buddy-buddy with Natsu, "Me and Natsu are being good to each other like always!"

"Aye!" Natsu said, acting the same as Gray.

"Ah, that's good. And Lucy? How are you?"

"I'm fine, Erza."

"Now, I'd like you all to come with me on another mission . . ."

As Erza began to explain the mission to Lucy and the two "best friends" (and Happy), a man with blue hair stood outside of Fairy Tail. He had an unusual tattoo on his right cheek and blue eyes. He grinned as he stood outside the door with a small black sphere. The man finally pulled open the double doors and everyone looked at him.

"Gerard!" Natsu yelled, fire surrounding his fists as he started to run at the man.

Gerard smirked and threw the small black sphere at Natsu, which exploded into thousands of dark particles which quickly filled the room and destroyed everything, slowly knocking each and every person unconscious.  
_  
_~xxx~

"Today's afternoon tea: chocolate macrons with fruit fillings and three types of berry shortcakes."

Sebastian Michaelis served his master; a thirteen year old kid with steel blue (the colour, mind you) hair, one eye visible and blue, the other covered with an eye-patch; his afternoon tea. He seemed to be thinking about something as he rested his head on his hand on the desk.

"Is something troubling you, young master?"

"No . . . What were this evening's plans again?"

"We are having a guest over to discuss your business. The mansion is almost ready for their arrival."

Ciel Phantomhive was the owner of "Funtom Company" which manufactured toys, sweets, and foods. He was also the head of the Phantomhive household since his parents had died in a fire on his tenth birthday.

Ciel spun his chair around and dully looked out of the window. He noticed someone in a black cloak walking towards the mansion. Sebastian noticed this as well and looked at his pocket watch.

"I don't believe that is our guest. They are three hours early," Sebastian noted, "Please wait here, young master."

Sebastian left the room and walked downstairs. He opened the door before the stranger could get to the top of the steps.

"Where's the master of this house?" the cloaked person said, who sounded female.

"He is preparing for a meeting. What business do you have with my young master?"

"The ring," she said bluntly, "I need it. Now."

Sebastian knew this stranger was talking about the silver ring Ciel always wore on his thumb. A symbol of being the head of the Phantomhive family. "I'm sorry, that ring is very dear to the young master."

"Sebastian, who is it?" Ciel said with a demanding tone as he walked down the stairs.

"I supposed you would say that. I'm afraid I have no choice now . . ."

The girl warped to the center of the main hall, surprising both Ciel and Sebastian. A small black sphere appeared in her hand and she crushed it easily, causing dark particles to float around the room, engulfing everyone and everything. Even the demon couldn't stay conscious to this unknown energy . . .

* * *

YOU KNOW SOMETHING IS BAD WHEN SEBBY-CHAN GOES DOWN! :O

Tune in next time to see what happens to our heroes and non-heroes and fan-service characters! Thanks for reading~!


	2. Arrival

Omg another edited chapter!

**Differences:** Only one character thus far (there are four in total) know who the unknown person is. No one knows about Xalcus.

Anyways, all the chapters after this have been deleted. They will be re-uploaded once I finish editing them. :)

Also, check out my profile if you actually want me to continue this story! Vote for it in the poll at the top of my page. Whichever story gets the most votes I'll set at the top of my priority list. :p

Fun fact: This chapter was twenty pages long on Microsoft Word! Twenty pages is usually the normal amount of pages I'll have per chapter within a story like this. XP

* * *

Thirteen _people_ were gathered in an arena. Eleven of them; Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Sonic The Hedgehog, Knuckles The Echidna, Link, Kirby, Kaito Kid, Sora, Roxas, and Natsu; were unconscious. The other two were waiting in the middle of the arena with black hooded cloaks on. One groaned and began to speak in a whiny, feminine voice.

"Geez, did they not get any sleep last night? How much longer will they make us wa-"

"Just shut up, Azure!" said the other voice, cutting her off. This voice also sounded female and spoke in an annoyed tone. Azure was about to argue back but shut up when the fighters began to regain consciousness. While most of the gang began to sit up and groan, Natsu was on his feet with a ticked off look.

"GERARD! WHERE ARE YOU?" He yelled, flames emitting from his body.

Azure's eyes widened and she hid behind her cloaked partner, who muttered, "Your element is water you moron, why are you scared of him?"

"What, you _aren't _scared of someone who could burn you to a crisp?" she whimpered. A number of people looked at her, confused. The other girl sighed and began to walk away.

"Hey, you can't just leave me here with them! This was YOUR idea!"

The cloaked figure snapped her fingers and a large monitor above the arena turned on. A tournament tree popped up on the screen, the matches listed along the bottom of the screen.

_Mario VS. Link  
Yoshi VS. Kirby  
Sonic VS. Knuckles  
Sora VS. Roxas  
Azure VS. Natsu_  
_Luigi VS. Kaito Kid_

_First Match: 10 minutes_

Azure's eyes widened at her opponent. "This isn't what we agreed on," she whimpered, the result of the battle already playing through her mind.

"A battle?" Natsu said, obviously getting excited. "So . . . Who's Azure?"

"Not me, that's for sure!" exclaimed Azure with a nervous smile. Her cloaked partner laughed and clapped her hands cheerfully. This was going to be _fun_ . . .

~xxx~

"I don't get it. Why do we have to fight each other?"

The eleven male fighters were gathered in a locker room of sorts. It was rather spacious for a locker room and could easily fit a dozen or so more people. Save for a few whispers from the ones who knew each other, it was rather quiet. Roxas had been the one to speak up, causing everyone to look up at him.

"Who cares?" Natsu says, looking as arrogant as ever, "I need a good fight after what happened back at the guild."

Sora looked towards Natsu, growing curious. "What happened?"

"This guy who tried to kill us before came in and tons of black smoke appeared. I swear, I'm gonna make him pay once I see him again!"

"Black smoke . . . ?" Sonic confirmed, remembering how he'd encountered a black smokey substance before waking up here.

"Yeah. Then I conked out and woke up here."

"Weird . . . That happened to me too," Sonic replied.

"Same here," Sora said, followed by agreeing nods from everyone else except Roxas.

"I didn't encounter any black smoke at all," Roxas said, "I met with one of my friends and I passed out on top of a clock tower . . ."

"Puyo puyo!" Kirby exclaimed, only to receive confused looks. As if on cue, the unnamed cloaked girl walked in and knelt down in front of Kirby. She stuck a small device on his forehead and smiled. As Kirby tried to look at the face under the hood, Kaito Kid walked towards the cloaked figure from the lockers he was leaning against not too long ago. He reached out a hand to pull back the hood when it was slapped away by the girl, who giggled quietly to herself. Resisting the urge to taunt him and reveal her voice, she stood up and walked over to Yoshi and stuck the same device on his neck. She then left the room, Kid swearing under his breath as Kirby tried to look up on the device on his head.

"Puyo . . ." Kirby muttered, causing another voice sounding like his to come out of the device. "_Weird . . ._" it said, causing Kirby's eyes to widen in shock.

"A translator . . ." Kid assumed, curious to how the girl got such technology.

"Anyways," Mario said, "Would you mind repeating what you said before?"

"Puyo . . . Puyo puyo!" Kirby repeated, which came out as; "_Okay . . Well, what that guy said is kind of the same for me. I saw my friend and she told me to follow her. Then she exploded into black stuff."_

"This pink marshmallow said all that in two weird sounds?" Natsu questioned, stepping closer to examine the translator, curious as to it actually works.

"Well, my friend didn't explode into darkness or anything . . ." Roxas said, remembering the event that took place before falling.

The door opened up before anyone else could say more and a female teenager walked in. She had long blue hair and blue eyes filled with annoyance. The girl was dressed in casual jeans and a fancy top. When she spoke, the fighters identified the voice as Azure's. "Alright boys, first match," she announced, reading off a sheet of paper, "Mario versus Link. Both of you are to head to the red door and blue doors respectively. If you get lost, check out one of the maps around the stadium, blah blah blah . . . The rest of you can head to the stands if you don't feel like sitting around like a bunch of lazy morons." She crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it into a nearby trash can. "You have three minutes. Oh, and don't worry about hurting each other. We'll just heal your wounds before the next battle."

"What happened to the cloak?" the blue hedgehog asked, unsure if he should trust this new face.

"That hideous thing?" Azure rolled her eyes. "Sister let me ditch it since she's absolutely positively sure none of you know me. Don't ask, she has issues." The girl left the room before anyone else could respond.

Not having much of a choice, the confused group got up one by one and left for the arena.

~xxx~

"Are you sure about doing this? I mean, fighting is fun to watch n' all but we really have a job to-"

"Azure. Shut it."

Azure and her sister sat in the announcer's booth, the former ready to announce the first battle. She noticed the first two brawlers walking to their places in the arena. Knowing there was no more time to talk; she sighed and turned on the mic.

"Our first match is some plumber and elf boy. Okay, begin the battle, blah blah blah."

Her friend gave her a sour look as the mic was turned off.

x~x

Link unsheathed his sword and dashed at Mario, who jumped over the attack and charged a fireball. Both wanted to get this over with and return home to their normal lives. The red plumber fired the fireball at the hero in green, who was smacked the minute he turned around. Thankful his clothes weren't severely burnt; Link took out a bomb, lit it, and tossed it Mario. The bomb landed right in front of Mario and sent him back a bit. A boomerang came flying through the smoke a second later. As the boomerang whizzed past Mario's head, he got his hammer ready and watched Link's boomerang curve and head back to its thrower. As it passed by him again, he quickly hit the boomerang back to Link, who had no time to dodge. Link was nailed right in the stomach, forcing him to fall back to the edge of the arena. He stood up as the smoke cleared and readied his bow and arrow. Mario got ready to counterattack when a funny looking pig appeared out of thin air in the middle of their duel.

"I believe my friend forgot to say this," said a voice over the loudspeaker, obviously covered with voice filters, "But every match I will add a unique gimmick. These gimmicks can be a stage change to a fun little item or even a particular rule. If you wonder why I do this, it's because I think a normal battle is fairly dull. Anyways, have fun."

The speaker was turned off as more pigs appeared on the stage. Mario shrugged and shot a fireball at the distracted Link, who barely avoided it. Rather, the fireball hit one of the pigs, which went red is anger. It dashed towards its attacker and tried to knock him down. As Mario leaped out of the way, Link took this opportunity to fire an arrow at his opponent. The arrow made its target Mario's hat and flew into the wall. As the pig calmed down, Mario got an idea. As Link fumbled for another arrow while making sure the ill-tempered pig were out of his way, Mario picked up one of the pigs and got his hammer ready. The pig squealed as it was thrown into the air and came in contact with the hammer. Like a ball and a bat, the pig flew towards Link and knocked him out of the arena. The Hylian's head crashed against the wall as a bell sounded, signaling the end of the match.

"That's strike three and Mr. Mario wins the match!" Azure said over the speaker with a smile, her horrid pun making her companion facepalm. The pigs began to disappear as the cloaked woman warped in front of the unconscious Link.

"The next match will be Yoshi versus Kirby. You have ten minutes to prepare or whatever."

The nine others who sat in the stands stood up and gaped at Link's body. The front of his tunic had been burnt from the fireball at the beginning of the match while the back of his head was soaked with the crimson colour of blood. The blood had already made its way down to his neck and continued along his back. The cloaked figure sighed as she put Link in a sitting position and lowered his head. A bright white sphere materialized in the woman's hand and infused with the wound, causing the skin to reform and close the wound. A damp towel appeared in the person's hand and she began to clean up the bloody mess.

Azure warped down and watched as Link seemed to look just as he did before the match.

~xxx~

Ten of the eleven fighters were gathered in the locker room again. Link was supposed to be resting somewhere from what they heard. They had all been silent until Kid decided to speak up.

"Kaito Kid."

Everyone looked at him, confused. "Huh?" each of them said in their own way.

"My name. Or at least, what I shall be known as here." Kaito Kid smirked as he leaned against the lockers. With this, the brawlers realized they hadn't introduced themselves to each other.

Sora was the next to introduce himself. "I'm Sora."

Sonic smirked and said, "I'm Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog. And this knucklehead-" he looked at the red echidna, "-is Knuckles."

As Knuckles gritted his teeth, Mario stood up and spoke. "You may know this from the match but I'm Mario."

"Yoshi!"

"_Hiiiiiiii, I'm Kirby!"_

"Roxas."

"Luigi!"

"And I'm Natsu!" yelled the fire-breathing teen with a big smile.

As if knowing each others' names made things better, they all started to smile and talk casually to each other. Talking about their pasts, their lost friends, silly moments . . .

T'was if it was a normal day.

Azure found herself walking into a room filled with laughter and joy after the ten minutes. She ahem'd and the room slowly went silent.

"I see all of you are having a good time . . . Anyways, according to Aq- Mrs. Dorkface, it's time for the next match. Elf boy is conscious again so some of you can go fetch him if you wish. Or not, whatever floats your boat. Questions? No? Good. Kirby and Yoshi, please go to the arena ASAP!"

Azure left the room as the green dinosaur and the pink puffball stood up. They looked ready to fight, even if they didn't particularly want to.

"Aren't you supposed to say the separate letters rather than what it would sound like as one word?" Kaito Kid mused, making fun of how Azure said 'aey-sap' rather than 'aey-es-aey-pee'.

Everyone chuckled slightly as they all left for the area, resuming their joyful chatter.

~xxx~

"Our second match of the day shall be a pink marshmallow versus a green dinosaur . . . lizard . . . thing . . ."

"It's a Yoshi."

"Right, a green thing."

The cloaked woman sighed at Azure's ignorance. It was always about her, wasn't it? "Anyways, the gimmick for this match is this," she said, still using the voice filters. She snapped her fingers and two Yoshi-looking eggs appeared on the arena; one in front of each of the fighters. "You mustn't let these eggs break. If your egg breaks, you automatically lose."

Azure rolled her eyes. "Yeah, no one cares. Just begin the damn battle thing."

Both the brawlers picked up the egg in front of them and stood cautiously. They lose if the egg breaks.

Yoshi placed his egg behind him and laid an egg of his own. He whipped the new egg at Kirby, who tossed his egg up in the air, took out his hammer, and hit the fired egg right back at Yoshi. The green dinosaur grabbed his egg and lept towards Kirby's airborne egg, which now seemed defenseless. As if out of nowhere, Kirby jumped up and hit Yoshi with his sword (which came out of nowhere, apparently), forcing him to fall back to the ground and release his egg. As he landed on his back, Yoshi watched his egg hurl towards the wall. Releasing his tongue and stretching it as far as he could, Yoshi grabbed the egg and pulled it back to him. Yoshi swallowed the egg and stood up; laying an egg that contained the egg he swallowed. With this knowledge, an idea formed in Yoshi's head.

Kirby decided to take the risk and ran towards Yoshi, egg in one hand, hammer in the other. Yoshi jumped over the pink puffball and whipped his egg at Kirby's. Unprepared, the eggs made contact. Kirby's egg smashed while only Yoshi's outer egg had broken. The bell sounded as the small crowd cheered.

"Well, wasn't that an _egg_cellent battle?" Azure snickered, her sister groaning at her attempted pun, "The . . . the green thing is the winner. Yeah . . ."

Yoshi and Kirby shook hands as the other fighters hopped down from the stands to congratulate them - Link included (who seemed to be one hundred percent better). Up in the announcer's booth, Azure couldn't help but notice her friend's smirk, seeming anxious for the next match.

~xxx~

Azure sat in the announcer booth and watched the time tick away slowly. The cloaked woman hadn't left the room this time around and had been strangely silent.

"Um . . . Aq-"

"Shush!" the woman scolded, cutting her off, "_He_ could be listening. He's a sneaky bastard . . ."

"Tch, whatever. Anyways, why are you making them fight like this? I mean, hello, we kinda have a world to save here."

The figure grew silent and pondered about the answer to this question. After what seemed to be forever, she responded with: "Boredom."

Azure gave her a questioning look but didn't respond. Rather, as if reading her mind, the woman said, "I'm also doing a small test for Mel-sama. However, it's hard since not all of them are here . . ."

"There are more of them?"

Amused, Azure's friend smiled. "Yup! Some fellows from the nineteenth century and many friends of the people you see now."

"Alright then . . . What kind of test are we talking about?"

"You'll see~!"

Azure slouched in her chair grimly as her friend got up and left to fetch the next pair of fighters.

~xxx~

"Our next match is a really damn fast blue hedgehog and a red mole that could probably destroy this arena with one punch."

_Again with the rudeness! _"First, he's an echidna. Second, that's a horrible exaggeration. Third, your makeup is running."

"Firstly, shut up nobody ca- WHAT?"

Azure frantically picked up a small mirror in front of her as the girl beside her snickered. She spoke into the microphone again as Azure frowned at her reflection, seeing nothing wrong. "Anyways, this match's gimmick is a stage change."

Suddenly, the flat stage morphed into a rocky terrain with uneven land and tall rocks towering above the ground. Two more rocks rose beneath Sonic and Knuckles, nearly knocking them over.

"Secondly, nothing is wrong with my makeup! Thirdly, you said the gimmick was-"

The anonymous girl grabbed Azure's mic and tossed it across the booth. "Fourthly, shut up. Begin the fight, please."

The girl turned off the mic as her sister began whining about something irrelevant. She tuned her out and watched the fight below.

x~x

Without a second to waste, Sonic jumped to the rock Knuckles stood on. Knuckles jumped back and off the rock, landing on the ground. As Sonic landed on the rock, Knuckles punched it, causing it to shatter. Sonic jumped onto the ground and ran at Knuckles, who sidestepped out of the way. The echidna raised his fist and ran at Sonic, who walked backwards, moving out of the way every time Knuckles tried to punch him. As the duo approached the edge of the arena, Sonic jumped over Knuckles and got ready to attack him when a scream stopped him in his tracks.

Using this moment of weakness, Knuckles punched Sonic in the stomach as hard as he could, sending him flying towards the wall. The blue hedgehog quickly spun into a ball and crashed into the walls of the arena. With only a few cuts and bruises, Sonic dashed towards the announcer's booth and threw open the door to see the cloaked person holding a knife to Azure's neck. She had a long, deep cut on her arm as well.

"What the hell are you doing?"

The woman smiled under her cloak and spoke, her voice coated with some sort of electronics, "I forgot to mention another gimmick. You can't leave the arena. So don't get yourself distracted." She turned on the mic and calmly said, "Knuckles the Echidna is the winner of the match. Please return to your room and prepare for the next ten minutes."

She watched as Sonic didn't move an inch when the mic was turned off. With a sigh, the woman grabbed Azure's arm and healed it the same way as Link's head. The skin sealed up and looked completely normal.

"See? No harm," she said, dropping the knife. Azure scrambled to the other side of the room, wanting to put as much distance as possible between them.

"Who are you?" Sonic questioned, beginning to distrust this person.

The unknown person smiled and calmly got up to sit in her chair again. "All in good time, my frustrated friend. For now, please accept your defeat and re-"

"You did all this just to make me lose? What is _wrong _with you? Why are we here anyways?" Sonic looked at Azure for an answer but she just shrugged, forcing him to look back at this psychotic freak.

"You lost by your own mistake. And you shall find out why you're here soon enough." She paused before continuing, "As for what is wrong with me, I'll just say _everything _is wrong with me. Capeesh? Now please leave, I believe my _assistant_ would like to speak with me."

Sonic hesitated then left for the locker rooms. Who is that person? What was their reason for bring them here?

~xxx~

"And what did you want to talk about?"

"I believe _you _wished to talk to _me._"

Azure continued to sit in the corner farthest from her assumed _friend_. She bit her lip and nearly started yelling at the top of her lungs. "Why the FLIP did you make him lose by _threatening _me? Why would you do such a thing?"

The anonymous woman smiled and said, "Boredom."

"WHAT?"

"You believed Sonic would win, did you not? I just wanted to give someone else the chance for the spotlight. His speed would be a nuisance to the other fighters. Knuckles relies on his power, making him easier to hit."

Azure stared in disbelief. Was her friend replaced when she wasn't looking? Or was this her darker, more sinister side?

"Azure, can you fetch me a can of Sprite?"

"Do it yourself!"

The woman frowned and spoke in a whiny childish voice, swiveling around in her chair and crossing her arms. "Meanie."

Azure sighed and got up to walk out of the room. Some things never did change. "Fine, I'll get your dumb soda . . ."

"Thank you!" her friend said with a smile, seeming to enjoy being in control of everything happening around her.

~xxx~

"Our next match contains two kids who fight with giant keys. I mean, really, who fights with a key?"

Azure's friend sighed and took a sip from her Sprite. "Azure, would a club be a good weapon?"

Azure blinked, confused. "Isn't a club a suit in the card games?"

"Baka! I mean the weapon that can bash people's heads in!"

"Ohhhh. Yeah, I suppose it's a decent weapon."

"A Keyblade is the same. You can bash people's heads in."

"It's still a dumb weapon," Azure muttered.

The woman sighed and moved the conversation back on topic. "Anyways, today's gimmick shall be familiar to the two fighters here today. I'll let you see for yourself before I explain."

The ground began to shake and the sound of a clock tower rang through the air. Sora and Roxas did their best to keep their balance as the arena began to rise to reveal the clock tower that was so well-known in Twilight Town. The two looked around anxiously, growing slightly nervous. The cloaked woman warped on the very top and began yelling loud enough to be heard by the two Keyblade wielders once the clock tower stopped rising.

"I'm only going to say this once so pay attention. The objective this time around is to not touch the ground floor. If you think the small edge isn't enough room to fight on, then you can take the battle to the skies. You have both been given the power to levitate."

Both Sora and Roxas began to doubt the last part. They had been told about the reason behind the scream after the last match. This woman seemed suspicious.

"In other words, you lose if you are knocked out or you fall back to the ground. You have no boundaries. Of course, you can't go ahead and fly as far away from this place as you possibly can. I'll be here, watching you two fight. You may begin now."

Both fighters summoned their Keyblades and thought to themselves. If this woman was lying about the whole flying thing, someone down there would make sure they wouldn't kill themselves. Besides, they had once been taught how to glide if anything went wrong. They'd just have a battle while slowly descending towards the ground.

Both of them made their decision.

They jumped off the clock tower . . .

. . . and flew up above it.

The woman smiled and looked at the two of them as they flew (or hovered, if you want to get pedantic) above her, Keyblades clashing. They mirrored each other's fighting skills, just as she thought they would. And if her math was right . . .

"Fire!" Sora yelled, as he and Roxas had been knocked back far enough to be out of the Keyblade's range. A ball of fire formed at the end of his Keyblade and shot towards Roxas.

"Blizzard!" Roxas sent out a ball of ice which collided with the fire, creating a small explosion between the two.

Roxas wasted no time to cast his next magic. "Thunder!" Bolts of lightning flew through the sky, a few nearly hitting Sora.

"Aero!" A shield of wind surrounded Sora, causing the lightning to bounce off. "Stop!"

Roxas froze, unable to move at all. Sora quickly flew up to him and hit him with the Keyblade, causing Roxas to start falling. "Cure!" Healing magic came out of the Keyblade and recovered Roxas, who flew back up to where Sora was. The magic and blade battle continued, each of them taking hits. Eventually their Keyblades were locked once more, neither of them showing any sign of giving up. Roxas glanced down at the figure who had been watching from the top of the clock tower this whole time. His eyes widened to see her eating sea-salt ice cream and no longer watching the battle. For a second, the person seemed familiar to him.

"Xion . . ." he mumbled. He returned to reality when his Keyblade went flying from his hands and he was struck in the shoulder, causing him to start falling again. He summoned his Keyblade again and as he winced at the pain, he shouted, "Cure!"

But nothing happened.

"Out of magic already?" The Keyblade wielder's Nobody clenched his teeth and began to fly back up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the coldness filling his body. His Keyblade clashed with Sora's once again before he would regain his balance. He had followed him down and intended to make sure he stayed down.

Sora flew up a bit and pointed his Keyblade at Roxas. "Gravity!"

Roxas sucked in air as he felt the life being sucked out of him. He began falling again, suddenly feeling his body go numb. The Keyblade disappeared and he fell towards the ground, his consciousness slowly slipping away. The woman realized this and warped to the bottom of the clock tower, creating a gust of wind to gradually slow Roxas's fall, only releasing her hold on the wind when Roxas had reached the ground. Sora landed next to her, wondering if his friend was okay.

"And what's-his-face soars to the next round, beating his opponent with flying colours!"

The woman began to grow irritated, knowing Azure has no idea how serious this just became. "Azure! Get down here right now!"

The blue haired teen warped beside her friend, seeming displeased. "What, you can't go up there?"

"Baka! This is serious!"

"Let me guess, you thought this kid was gonna win instead of the other? Y'know, you can't always get what you wa-"

"Poison."

Azure gave her a blank stare. "Eh?"

The woman seemed extremely stressed, starting to pace back and forth. "Before the match began. There must've been one on top of the clock tower. I must've let my guard down and didn't notice it."

Azure crossed her arms as her friend stopped and knelt down beside Roxas. "One of what? There are tons of creatures on this planet that can poison humans!"

By this time, everyone had left the crowd and gathered around. "An uncommon creature for the daylight hours. It's a-"

"Vampyre?"

"No, not a vampyre. They roam in the daylight all the time you idiot."

"No they don't! I don't see people that sparkle or anything!"

The cloaked person did a mental facepalm and wished she never let Azure read the Twilight saga. "Vampyres don't sparkle. And they don't poison people. Not in this world at least."

"Liar! They do so sparkle!"

"Azure, have you ever seen me sparkle in the sunlight before?"

"You're only part vampyre, you don't count."

_Why me . . . ? _"Anyways, enough about stupid vampyres. I'm talking about an Invysible."

"Ohh. Well, he's screwed."

The woman sighed and turned to look at all the fighters gathered around them. "I apologize for the trouble. I'll extend the time between now and the next match to somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour. You may do whatever you please until I call everyone back. And I assure you your friend, Roxas, will be just fine."

Azure began muttering to herself, "Fine my a-"

The woman stomped on Azure's foot, causing her to shut up and start complaining about how her shoes are all dirty now. "Please ignore her; you have my word that he will be okay. I wouldn't want someone to die during a tournament I hosted. It would make me feel horrible."

No one said a word, not knowing if to believe her. All of this seemed so wrong and odd.

The cloaked person, beginning to feel uneasy in the silence, quietly said, "You may all go now."

When no one moved, she opened her mouth to repeat but then a few people turned and left, the rest following behind. She sighed and began to wish she hadn't done any of this in the first place.

~xxx~

Roxas had been put on a bed, lying on his stomach. He was still unconscious and his shirt had been taken off. On his back was a large, deep wound which still had blood slowly gushing out of it. The wound looked like it was made by a claw done in a hurry; wide and jagged. The blood looked red-purple, much to the woman's dismay.

No doubt, he was poisoned.

The woman stood beside Roxas's bed, still pondering over what to do. Azure opened the door and walked in, closing it behind her. She walked up to the woman and yanked the hood off.

"Azure! What do y-"

"Calm yourself," Azure said, leaning against the wall, "No one's around, I checked. And this kid ain't getting up anytime soon. Besides, it made me feel like I was talking to some crazy psychopath murderer when you looked like that."

"Fine," the woman sighed, not wanting to argue, "Just for now, however."

"Of course," Azure replied, looking at her friend's face. She never understood how she was this girl's clone. She had pretty blue eyes, blond hair . . . Everyone said they looked so similar but she never saw it.

The two teens went silent, both of their minds thinking about completely different things. Eventually, the blondie sighed and mumbled something that was incomprehensible to Azure.

"Um . . . Can you repeat that . . ?"

"Roxas . . . I'm going to help him . . ."

"What, you can make antidotes for deathly poisons now?"

The woman stared at Roxas's wound. "Of course not. I'm not like Melody, memorizing the contents of a six thousand paged potion book within five seconds. I can only transfer the poison to another person . . ."

"Idiot! You'll die if you do that!"

The woman's hand hovered about a foot over Roxas's wound as a thin line of light connected the two. She looked at Azure and smiled. "If that happens, you'll take leadership and save our wonderful planet, correct?"

Before Azure could reply with something rude or sappy, her friend sucked in air in pain as the poison from the wound flowed on the string and into an opening wound on the hand. Azure grabbed her shoulders so she could stay balanced.

"Holy sh-! . . ." she muttered under her breath, beginning to feel pain, followed by numbness. Bits of blood started spewing from her mouth, forcing her to cover it with her free hand. The small string of light broke as the teen stumbled back, unable to keep her balance anymore.

"Oh god . . ." Azure muttered, noticing her friend's body was going cold. She put her friend's hood up and propped her up against the wall. "I-I'm gonna find someone, okay?"

The woman didn't respond and started coughing. Azure stood up and headed for the door. She opened it just to have it bonk into Sora's head, who muttered a small "ow".

"I'm sorry! She . . . Look, can you just go find someone to help?"

Sora peeked over Azure's shoulder to see a blond girl with a black cloak coughing up mouthfuls of reddish-purple blood. He also looked at Roxas before responding. "Um, okay, I'll try . . ." He turned and ran down the hallways, questions rising in his head. How did that weird mystery chick, who was barfing up weird coloured blood, get in a worse condition than Roxas, who seemed perfectly normal?

~xxx~

It had been fifteen minutes since everyone was alerted about the woman's condition. No one knew the details, however, only that her blood contained poison as well. Another bed had been set up in the room Roxas had been sleeping in. He was still unconscious but his torso area had been bandaged. Beside him was the other bed that the woman was laying in. Her skin had gone a ghostly white, her veins visible through her skin. Azure stood at her side, more worried about her condition than Roxas's. The door began to creak open and was shut again when a woman about the same age as the other two walked in. Her hair was long and burgundy and her eyes were green with a bored, emotionless look in them. She wore black jeans and a fancy white t-shirt that seemed to blend with her slightly pale skin.

Azure turned to look at the visitor. "Melody . . ."

"You should've told me about this tournament." Her voice seemed as dead as her eyes.

"Sister didn't want you to "ruin her fun"," Azure said as Melody walked over, inspecting the cloaked person's body. "Besides, didn't you know from her thought process?"

"Azure, please remove her cloak," the emotionless woman said, ignoring her question, "The wound has opened up on her back, like the boy's did."

"B-But what if . . . ?" she began, looking over at Roxas who appeared to be sleeping rather than knocked unconscious by a deadly poison.

"It'll be fine," Melody answered, more concerned about the girl's health. Azure hesitated then snapped her fingers, making the cloak vanish and leaving the woman in her normal clothing. A vial materialized in Melody's hand, containing a white substance. Azure resisted to poke fun at the colour and listened to what her friend had to say.

"The antidote will take effect ten minutes after she drinks it. You'll know it works because she'll cough up all the poison.

"And because you are a genius."

Melody cracked a small smile that faded just as fast as it was made. "That too."

Coughing and groaning could be heard from Roxas as he began to stir. Azure's eyes widened, thinking he wouldn't wake up.

"Melody, you said-"

"I said "it'll be fine" not "he won't wake up"," Melody said, now looking at Roxas who struggled to sit up.

"What happened . . ?" he mumbled and looked over at the bed beside him. He gave a confused look and rubbed his eyes.

"You were poisoned," Melody answered, "Her highness saved your life at the cost of her own."

_Her highness? _He glanced down at the bandage around his stomach. Everything was just so confusing to him.

Why were he and everyone else here? What was the purpose of all of this?

Melody sighed as she answered Roxas's thoughts, "The reason you and the others are gathered here will be revealed after this tournament. The purpose of this tournament is mostly boredom on her behalf . . ." She glanced at the unconscious girl before continuing, "However, this is also a sort of test. That will also become clearer within the future."

The Nobody blinked, feeling even more confused. A test? Was it something to see who's the strongest?

The apathetic teenager sat the woman's body up against the wall and forced her to drink the antidote, only laying her back down when all of the liquid was consumed.

"Azure, you will take good care of our protector, correct?

"Eh? You're leaving already?"

Melody spoke as she began walking towards the door, "Yes. I can't entrust the children with the boys. I fear for Kassandra as well."

Melody opened the door and turned towards the trio once more. "I shall see you tomorrow, if everything goes according to plan. Good-bye Lady Azure. Roxas." She bowed slightly before leaving the room, closing the door behind her.

Roxas lied back down, nothing making sense in his mind. Firstly, why were he and the others here? Second, who was that girl and how did she know his name?

~xxx~

"And our next match is-"

"NO NO, I FORFEIT THE MATCH, OKAY?"

"Tch. Wimp," the unknown woman (who was wearing her cloak once again) muttered as she dragged Azure to the arena. It had been half an hour since the girl was given the antidote. She had coughed up all the poison and was unaware of Melody's visit. As for Roxas, he felt fine enough to watch the fights from the stands again.

Natsu was waiting with a big smile on his face, seeming ready to fight.

"Yeah, I'm a wimp! Now let me give up!" Azure whined, struggling to get away.

The small crowd started to laugh as Azure continued her attempts to flee from the arena. She glared in their general direction, a massive wave of water appearing from nowhere, ready to crash down on the fighters. Sonic was the only one to escape getting completely drenched.

Azure started laughing uncontrollably. Her sister smirked behind her.

"See? You'll be just fine in this match."

"Wha-? No! I forfeit! Mr. Scary-fire-guy wins!" Azure said, her laugh taking on a nervous tone.

Her friend sighed and raised her voice. "Fine then. Natsu is the winner by forfeit."

"Aww," the pink haired Dragon Slayer groaned, "I was looking forward to some action . . ."

"Don't worry. Your next match shall be a blast, I promise. Since we have time, Luigi will face Kaito Kid for now."

The two jumped down from the crowd, dripping wet, and took their places in the arena as Natsu went to take a seat. The two waited to hear about the gimmick for the match.

The woman warped up to the announcer's booth and turned on the mic. "Since one of our contestants is the one of the greatest magicians on Earth, therefore, making this interesting, the rules will be normal. Go ahead and start."

Kaito Kid smirked. "Good. I didn't want to follow any quirky rules anyways." As Luigi took out his hammer (how does that fit in his pocket . . ?) and ran towards Kid, smoke was released, the magician completely hidden from view. Luigi trusted his instinct and ran into the smoke and swung his hammer wildly in attempt to hit his opponent.

_SQUEAK!_

The smoke cleared and Luigi saw that he had hit an inflatable balloon shaped like Kaito Kid. The balloon popped and Luigi's hat suddenly flew off his head, pinned against the wall with a card. The plumber spun around to see Kid holding a gun in his hand. He fired again, another card flying out. Luigi jumped over the card and ran at Kid again, a ball of lightning forming in his hand. He shot the ball of lightning and hit Kid right in the chest, who shook a bit from the shock. With no time to waste, Luigi jumped up and hit Kaito Kid in the head with his hammer, who fell over in a daze.

"And the winner is-!"

"Quiet you! He's not out yet!"

"The lovely mysterious announcer is right," Kaito Kid groaned, standing back up. He looked at Luigi, who was now holding a vacuum (don't ask), the Poltergust 3000! "Hah! What's a vacuum cleaner gonna do-"

Suddenly, a fireball shot out of the vacuum, forcing Kid to duck down. He yelped a bit when he noticed a small flame on his hat, but was unable to do anything about it since more fire was coming out of the vacuum, forcing him to get up and run around the arena. Luigi stopped spraying fire and shot ice out of the vacuum beneath Kid's feet, causing him to slip and fall. As Kaito Kid sat up, a ball of water hit him in the face.

"Whoops, wrong element," Luigi mumbled, attempting to switch it back to fire. Before he could do anything more, Kaito Kid took out his gun and shot a card at the Poltergust 3000, causing it to spark and malfunction, slightly jolting Luigi. Smoke suddenly appeared, concealing Kaito Kid once more. Once it cleared, all that seemed to be left was Kid's hat, cape, gloves, and a smiling mask where the face would be, all floating in the air. Luigi screamed and ran off of the arena, towards the exit. More smoke was released and Kid reappeared, completely whole.

"Works every time," he muttered with a smirk.

"And the winner is Kaito Kid-kun, the Phantom Thief!" the anonymous woman cheered.

Azure started counting down, "Three . . . two . . . one . . . aand . . . !"

_THWACK!_

"I believe Luigi found the exit," she mused. Of course, there were invisible walls in front of all the entrances and exits from the outside of the arena. A few people in the crowd chuckled as they cheered for the winner. They hopped down from the crowd and waited for their next instructions, knowing this was the end of the first round. The large monitors over the arena turned on and the next matches were shown.

_Natsu VS. Mario  
Kaito Kid VS. Knuckles  
Sora VS. Yoshi_

_Next Match: 15 Hours, 31 Minutes_

The woman began speaking, starting to sound anxious as she continued, "As you can all see, the next round starts tomorrow at noon. Yes, don't let the sky fool you, it's actually past eight o'clock at night, as bright as it may seem. So you can do whatever you like until then."

Some of the fighters looked at the sky as she spoke. The sky was orange, as if the sun was just setting. Was it really eight at night?

They decided to not think about it much and left to go do whatever they pleased until the first round started.

~xxx~

Kaito Kid wandered through a corridor within the arena. His head still hurt, his hat was slightly scorched, and his chest hurt from that ball of lightning. I mean, where does a plumber learn to use lightning?

The magician stopped walking and looked around. Great, now he was lost. I mean, all these halls looked the same! With a sigh, he began opening doors to see if he could either find a familiar room or person to guide him. A few doors later, he opened a room that looked like a normal bedroom. Sitting on the bed was the cloaked girl, playing a Nintendo DS.

Dying music could be heard from the DS as she started muttering in her normal voice, "Ahh, you motherfu . . ." She noticed Kid's presence and shut up, realizing her mistake. Kaito Kid looked at her curiously, trying to remember where he had heard that voice before. The sound of the portable device being closed and the filtered voice brought him out of his thoughts as the woman stood up and looked at him, the cloak's hood shadowing her face.

"Do you need something?"

"Um . . ." Kaito Kid mumbled, trying to think of an excuse. "I think my head still hurts a bit. I figured I would look for you or that other girl . . ."

She sighed and walked over to him, a small vial of aqua coloured liquid appearing in her hands. "Drink this and the pain should go away."

Kid hesitated then took the vial, drinking it all in one gulp. The pain in both his head and chest slowly began to fade away. Then, to his surprise, she took his hat and looked at the small burnt spot, which made a bit of a hole.

"H-Hey, give that-"

"Relax; there are probably many people on Earth that would have a similar appearance as you, Kaito Kid-kun. Besides, your identity doesn't really concern me. Some things are better a secret, anyways. It adds to the suspense and mystery, wouldn't you agree?"

As she spoke, the burn mark faded away and the hole sewed itself back up, as if by magic. "I guess . . ." Kid muttered as the woman placed the hat back on his head. She then put her index finger over a burn mark on Kaito Kid's chest.

"The lightning appeared to burn your clothing as well . . ." she mumbled as the burn disappeared just as the one on his hat did. Realizing me might not get another chance; Kid grabbed the girl's hand and kissed it.

"My lady, you are much to kind," he said. With a poof of smoke, a rose appeared in his hand and he offered it to the woman, who took it silently. "A small gift to show my gratitude." Once she took it, Kid raised his hand and intended to push back the woman's hood to reveal her face. The woman didn't react at all and just stared at the rose.

Kid hesitated then lowered his hand. "Surely, if I knew who you were, it would ruin this puzzling mystery. Besides, you are planning to tell us once all this is over, correct?"

The woman nodded slowly, seeming to be mesmerized by the flower.

Kid smiled, took a step back, and bowed. "And now I shall be off. Good-bye, m'lady." He walked out of the room, leaving the woman alone. A few seconds later, he poked his head back in and began to ask: "Um . . . Where is the-"

"Continue going right until you reach a junction in the hallway. Turn left and the third door on the left of that hall is the locker rooms. There are rooms for all of you connected to that room."

"Thank you!" Kid grinned and left once more in the direction she said, remembering the familiar blue eyes he got a glimpse of from under the hood.

The woman sighed and stuck the rose in a vase. She picked up the DS and looked at the screen, which read "GAME OVER".

The woman made a sour face and spoke in her normal voice, "Whaat? That's not fair, I wasn't even playing! Dumb GBA games . . ." She growled a bit and retried the level in peace, hoping no one else walks in on her.

* * *

_"okay. . . but you better finish the story! or i'll kill you with the help of my kudan! (which of course you have no idea what it is _ )"_

_"Yeah, I'll finish it. In like, five years from now. XD  
Let's be logical but using math. One WWC chapter is like, the size of three TTT chapters. It takes one month minimum to release a new TTT chapter.  
Therefore: One WWC chapter would take about three months to make. The story will have sixteen chapter in total (including the prologue and epilogue). 3 X 16 = 48. So it would take forty eight months to complete this story following my logic. That's four years.  
Now, since four and a half chapters have been completely, that's about thirteen months and a half. 48 - 13.5 = 34.5.  
Therefore, the story will be complete in a little less than three years. :)"_

**Azure: **Wow fail-nerd.

Shut up. Yeah, this is a conversation me and Zanudikkotik had not more than twenty minutes ago. I honestly think I won't finish this story until I'm out of high school (four years from now). XD Also, for your amusement, we have a number of characters in this story to speak at the footers and headers of each chapter. These people include the Xalcian cast, six other original characters (based on my friends), Kirby, Natsu, Kaito Kid, and Sonic.

**Kirby:** Puyo!

**Azure:** Really? First you MAKE this piece of crap, then you actually REVIVE it, and now you're forcing me to actually be a PART OF IT? Screw this I'm leaving.

I'll let you date a super awesome hott guy who is totally into you.

**Azure:** TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR THE REST OF THE SUPER AWESOME TOURNAMENT AND A GLIMPSE AT THE VILLAINS BEHIND THIS MAGNIFICENT PLOT!

Yup! Baiiz~!


	3. Reasoning

Yay, more edits! An entire section was taken out of this edit since it didn't make much sense, even if I completely changed the dialogue.

Anyways, here is the end of the tournament! This is thing was basically half filler but it becomes slightly significant in the second to last chapter (yes, I have each chapter planned out).

**Azure:** And we all know you're never going to get _there_ . . .

Did you not see the math I did at the end of the last chapter? LESS THAN THREE YEARS! That's not never!

**Azure:** Like you'll have readers in three years . . .

Pfft . . . Well, SHUT UP. YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE A BOYFRIEND IN THREE YEARS!

**Azure:** YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE A BOYFRIEND _EVER!_

. . . You're right. ;_; Just get on with the story . . .

* * *

A man in a back hooded cloak walked down a corridor in his castle. It had been billions of years since he'd wrecked havoc on this pitiful planet and began the war of light and dark. For all these years, his subordinates had failed at completely taking over the planet. They had either been killed or in the case of today; grown soft and sided with the heroes' side.

Somewhere around two million years ago, he fused his soul with a child and gave him the curse of the Chaos Orb - a mystical artifact with unlimited dark powers. The curse made everyone dislike him, causing him to go berserk and destroy everything in sight. This continued for at least another dozen centuries, making him believe no heroes would be sent to stop him.

Then _she _came along . . .

The man entered a room where twelve . . . well, I can't say "people". Twelve _figures_, that's better. Twelve figures were gathered in this room before he had entered. The room contained rows of bookshelves along the walls, a rather large wooden desk, and a worn red carpet that led to the desk at the back of the room. Everyone had stopped talking when the man entered, making everything seem ominously quiet. The man walked over to the desk and stood behind it, his aura giving off a strong negative vibe.

"Hello my fellow acquaintances of the distant universes. I'm guessing you all wish for an explanation to your reason of being here."

"Darn right we do!" a large turtle-like creature growled. He has a green shell with spikes on the back, two horns and red hair-like stuff on his head. "You can't just take us away from our lives and bring us here!"

"It wasn't my decision, mind you. Anyways, let's get straight to the point. How many of you have heard of a planet named Xalcus?"

No one said a word, the planet completely foreign to them.

"Just as I thought. Xalcus is a planet that has existed for eons without anyone knowing of its existence. It's a pleasant place, really. Clean atmosphere, beautiful land, bloodthirsty demons, soul-eating spirits . . . A planet with immense power."

The man turned to look at the windows behind his desk, the ones that covered most of the wall. Outside was the forest this castle resided in, quiet and shadowy. "You see, this planet has been in a war ever since it was created. The powerful deity that created this planet was seen as evil, however, and was sealed away by its own gods it created. A few million years later, my wife and I took over this land. This began the war of the two elements; light and dark. Unfortunately, we were overthrown and sealed away but the war continued."

With a pause, he turned towards the crowd, many seeming bored out of their minds. "Now, so I don't bore you anymore with a history lesson, let us move the story to the present. My host has grown soft and is now in love with our enemy and we can't take over unless she's dead. The only person that can kill her is the bearer of the Chaos Orb; my host. I'm simply a spirit using his body so I can't do anything about it."

A person with short blue hair and an odd tattoo on his cheek spoke up, "And what do you want us to do about it? We can't kill her if what you say is true."

The man grinned and continued, "Correct, you can't kill her. However, this wonderful deity has decided to merge all our universes together. Therefore, I believe most or your enemies are on this demented version of my delightful planet. My host scattered these powerful objects across the land called the Elemental Orbs. Each contains one of the six main elements of my planet; light, dark, water, fire, earth, and air. If you obtain them, they may give you extraordinary powers . . ."

" "May"?" a teenager questioned. He wore a black cloak and he had silvery hair that went down to his shoulders. He also had on a black blindfold.

"It's not guaranteed the orb will give you its energy. Only those worthy to possess its element. For example, if I were to obtain the Dark Orb, my dark energy would increase greatly. However, if I were to obtain the Light Orb, nothing would happen since I lack the emotions and personality to use light energy."

"Interesting," an egg-shaped man commented. He had a brown mustache and wore round glasses. "However, if we and our universes have merged together, does this mean objects from our world are here too?"

"Most likely," the man replied, "Who knows? Maybe the orbs have even merged themselves with objects of great power from your world. It does happen at times."

A few of the villains and anti-heroes grinned, knowing if they found the powerful objects in their world, it would make this much easier.

"Wait," a small puffball creature asked. He wore a mask and a purpley cape, a golden sword sheathed at his side. "Why are the orbs scattered? You could've just brought them here instead of separating them."

The man's expression grew dark. "Like I said, my host isn't exactly on our side. I forced him to steal them but he resisted and hid them from me. Only he knows their location, unfortunately. But she should join our side soon enough . . ."

The man glanced outside and noticed the moon rising over the trees. "My, it seems to be getting late. All of you are free to wander this castle and world as you see fit. There should be some rooms for you all to sleep in to the left once you leave this room. The next twelve rooms past the room directly to the left are bedrooms for all of you."

"Before we go," a woman in a hooded cloak said coldly, "We'll need your name and a reason to work with you."

The man smiled and pulled his hood back to reveal black spiked hair, one black eye and one red eye (as in the iris colours). "You may call me Axel. And you should help because you can get revenge for your enemies and ultimate power. But that last part is only if we awaken the deity that's sealed away."

Without much else to say, all of the villains and anti-heroes left the room. Axel sat on his desk and smirked. They all believed him. Some might've been a bit skeptical about the whole idea but they would work with him in the end. Everything was going according to plan.

~xxx~

"The next match, Mario versus Natsu, will begin in ten minutes. I repeat, Mario and Natsu are to fight in ten minutes."

The woman turned off the mic and leaned back in her chair. It was round two and she was ready to watch some more exciting matches. She had already thought up all the gimmicks (which she found fairly amusing in her own way) and she already had ideas for the semi-finals. Yep, everything was just great!

Azure walked in the announcer's booth a short time later with a yawn and sat down in her chair. Her sister gave her a serious look.

"Azure, mind reminding me what happened yesterday when I absorbed the poison from Roxas's body?"

Azure blinked and looked at her nervously. A test to see if the story was the same. "Well, you fell unconscious so I secretly returned to the mansion and found the potion book!"

"But that book is in ancient Xalcian. Last I checked, you can't read it."

"I got Nikki to tell me. He's pretty damn smart when it comes to that stuff."

The woman didn't buy it. "And he didn't ask you why you needed it?"

"Well, he was like, half-drunk so he didn't say much about it."

Azure's sister sighed, not knowing what to believe. She didn't know what happened so she had nothing else to go by . . .

~xxx~

At around noon, everyone had come out and went to their respective places. Mario and Natsu took their places on the battlefield while the rest sat in the stands.

"Alright, it's the first match of the second round," Azure said with enthusiasm in the mic. Before she could continue, the other woman cut in, using her filtered voice, "Today we start off with an explosive battle between the two flame users; Mario and Natsu! I say "explosive" because today's twist involves many explosions."

"Thank you for pointing that out, Captain Obvious," Azure mumbled, unaware her mic was still switched on. The woman smacked her in the head, feeling slightly irritated.

"Owww!" Azure whined, who was ignored by the one sitting beside her but got a few chuckles from the crowd.

"Anyways, as I was saying before I was _rudely_ interrupted, today's battle will involve lots of explosions and fire."

As if on cue (and it probably was), many trapdoors opened around the stage, revealing large cannons with fuses on the ends and two massive walls at the two ends of the arena where the fighters stood. Natsu's face lit up like a kid on Christmas Day.

"Haha, this is great!" Natsu cheered, "If only Erza and the others could be here! Then I could easily kick their a-"

In Natsu's joyful mood, flames had began erupting from his body, setting off one of the cannons. A cannonball fired at the wall behind Mario, smashing the top but not leaving a scratch on the rest of it. While the crowd was silent with awe, Natsu ran to the next cannon, intending to light the fuse. Before he could do so, however, ice rose out of the ground from under him, freezing him in his tracks.

"Please, Natsu," the woman scolded over the mic, "Control your impulse until the battle actually starts."

"Ha! Ice can't stop me!" Natsu exclaimed as more flames began surrounding him, beginning to melt the ice. The woman winced, as if melting the ice hurt her.

"Okay, the objective of the battle is to destroy your opponent's wall," Azure said quickly, noticing her sister's condition, "Go ahead and start already!"

Azure switched off the mics as the ice around Natsu melted completely. Unfortunately, he was a little slow and a cannonball fired at his wall, breaking a few bricks off it. The woman laughed a bit between coughing in pain, causing Azure to look at her all funny.

"What are you laughing about?"

"This match has already been predicted. The winner is painfully obvious."

"Yeah, well, your surprise back in the match with the two _Keyblade _wielders," Azure remarked, forcing the word "Keyblade" out of her mouth, "seemed like you didn't control this tournament like you thought you did."

"That was because an outside party interfered with the match, nothing more. I mean, it's not like this place is hidden so it was bound to happen sometime or later."

Knowing arguing back was pointless, Azure looked back at the fight. Both walls were about half broken already. Natsu lit one of the cannons and shot it towards Mario's wall. Having an idea, Mario got his hammer out, jumped up, and hit the cannonball right back to Natsu's side, breaking a bit of his wall.

"No way, you can do that?" Natsu yelled with a smile, despite him now losing the match. As Mario fired another cannonball Natsu jumped up and pulled back his fist. "Fire Dragon's Iron Fist!"

Before Mario could react, the ball was shot back towards his side at a high speed, crashing into the wall. Natsu landed on the ground where he could see the fuses for each cannon.

"Fire Dragon's . . ." Natsu yelled, making his cheeks all puffed up and aiming towards the fuses, "ROAR!"

Natsu breathed out a horrendous amount of fire that set off a number of cannons. Mario ducked and covered his head with his arms as the cannonballs fired at the wall, sending bricks and smoke everywhere. The smoke cleared to show the wall completely broken.

"Hooray, Natsu moves on to the semifinals!" the cloaked woman cheered, although her excitement sounded odd with the voice filters. Nevertheless, Natsu smiled and waved to the few people in the crowd as Mario stood up and dusted himself off.

As the woman tried to contain her excitement for the match, she cleared her throat and said, "Since we have plenty of time today, the time between the following matches will be about a half hour. The next match shall be the Magician of the Moonlight; Kaito Kid-kun, versus the red knucklehead; Knuckles!"

Knuckles groaned at his nickname as Kid smirked, noticing how this person seemed to know him well enough to address him with "kun" not once but twice since they met. Everyone got up and left the arena, leaving Azure to shake her head and sigh at her sister.

"Of course you give that fake magician a cool nickname . . ."

"He's not fake!" the woman blurted with a laugh, "I mean, walking on air is a pretty neat trick. Besides, he's pretty damn cute, wouldn't you agree?"

Azure sighed at hearing her sister ramble. "You have a weird taste for men, you know that?"

"Look who's talking. I mean, Taylor Launtner looks like a pile of sh-"

Azure hit the woman in the head and gave her a ticked off look. "Aey, that's NORMAL compared to YOUR tastes! And at least it's only one person unlike your thirty million love interests!"

"Eight, actually," the woman noted, "Well, those are the ones off the top of my head. And only three actually like me back."

"And there's my point," Azure muttered, her sister laughing as she got up and left the announcer's booth, wanting to do something for the next twenty or so minutes.

~xxx~

Azure yawned and turned on the microphone after seeing everyone had gathered, the two combatants at their sides of the arena. Her sister had left with a big smile on her face a minute ago saying she'd be right back.

"Le'see, the match of the half hour is . . ." Azure mumbled dully, looking at the names on the paper in front of her. "Knuckles the Echidna against Kaito Kid . . . Whoop-dee-friggin'-doo."

"Azure!" the woman yelled as she walked in, making Azure yelp, "Be more enthusiastic!"

"Yes ma'am!" Azure said, sounding more cheerful as the woman sat down and spoke into the mic with a smile.

"Before I reveal the gimmick for this match, let me just say you will be surrounded by a flexible shield throughout this whole match, allowing you to do what may seem impossible in the circumstance. Once the shield breaks, you lose."

Everyone seemed to be confused by this until the arena floor seemed to magically disappear, forcing the two to drop into a large, deep pool. They slowly sunk to the bottom, noting that they weren't wet and could breathe just fine. Kaito Kid noticed figures swimming around, his eyes widening when he saw what it was.

"F-Fish?" he gaped, trying to maneuver away from them, noticing how the shield didn't improve his underwater speed at all. Once reaching the bottom, he could see Knuckles starting to leap towards him, slower due to the water. Kid smirked and jumped up over the red echidna just to come face to face with a school of fish. With a yelp, he tried to swim away, forcing Knuckles to swim after him.

The chase continued for some time, the two only hitting each other a few times; shields still intact.

"Are they done yet?" Azure groaned from the surface, feeling bored. Her sister elbowed him in the arm and gave her a "shut up and watch" look.

"I'll weaken the shields," the woman sighed. Azure smiled and looked back at the underwater fight, a hologram appearing in front of them so they would watch better.

Back underwater, Kaito Kid had dodged Knuckles's punch for the umpteenth time and was now standing on a large rock. He grinned as he got an idea.

"Hey knucklehead!" he shouted, "Come and hit me! Or are you just waaay too slow?"

Knuckles grit his teeth, leaped up into the air, and came down towards Kid, his fist aiming for his head. Once again, the magician sidestepped out of the way and Knuckles's fist collided with the rock. However, much to his surprise, the impact broke THROUGH the rock, sending pieces everywhere.

The magician stared in absolute shock, knowing the red echidna was a force he shouldn't piss off. Kaito Kid noticed a chunk of rock flying towards him. He snatched it and quickly smashed the chunk into Knuckles's head, who, fortunately, didn't fall unconscious due to the shield.

Unfortunately, the shield began to crack. Before giving him time to react, Kid kicked Knuckles who flew (slowly, may I add) into another nearby rock, causing the rest of the shield to shatter. Knuckles grumbled as he held his breath and swam to the surface. Kaito Kid began to follow until a fish swam in his path, causing him to freak out a bit and move back down to the bottom.

As he looked for an opening away from fish life, an eel-like thing slithered out from under a rock and swam towards him. Completely unaware, the eel swam into Kid's back and sent a jolt of electricity through his body, the sudden pain forcing him to scream. The shield immediately shattered as Kid sucked in a mouthful of water. The pain made everything seem fuzzy and inhaling water made his consciousness slowly slip away.

x~x

Knuckles emerged from the pool and climbed onto land, dripping wet. His old pal and rival, Sonic the Hedgehog, jumped down from the stands and walked over to him with a cocky grin on his face.

"I take it you lost?"

"Hey! YOU try fighting in there!" Knuckles yelled angrily, jerking his thumb in the direction of the water over his shoulder.

Sonic laughed and pat his buddy on the opposite shoulder. "And why don't you beat me in a race of speed?"

Up in the announcer's booth, the hologram had vanished the minute Knuckles' shield broke. The woman winced and quickly sat up, knocking her chair over. "Kid-!"

"Calm yourself," Azure yawned, popping a slice of orange into her mouth, "You said he had ici . . ikis . . ichth . ."

"Ichthyophobia," her sister said flatly, gazing down at the pool.

"Exactly. He's freaked out of the guppies. That's why he's taking forever to surface."

"Idiot!" the woman yelled, "His shield broke for some reason!"

Azure looked at her with a confused face, the woman warping away as soon as she blinked. She looked out the window and saw her levitating over the pool. The woman's body and cloak morphed into a figure made of water and dropped, blending into the water within the pool. The woman began to swim towards the bottom, grabbing Kid's hat, which had got caught by a fish.

_Dammit! _she mentally screamed, spotting Kid's unconscious body at the bottom of the pool, his cape trapped under a rock and the eel thing circling the area. She focused on making the cover reappear over the pool, causing confusion above and darkness below. The woman landed on the pool floor, stuck Kid's hat under her shoe slightly to keep it down, and made a bow and arrow appear in her hands. A beam of light shone at the end of the arrow, lighting the way ahead of her. She took aim at the eel and fired, striking it through the centre of its body and sending it towards the wall. The eel let out a screech of pain before morphing into black goo that slithered back into the rocks.

The weapon vanished and the woman picked up Kid's hat again and swam over to the owner. She kicked the rock out of the way and created a bubble of air around Kid's head as he slowly began to float up like a corpse. Shaking the thought of him being dead out of her head, the woman wrapped her arm around Kaito Kid's torso and began to swim to the surface, using telekinesis to push the fish out of the way.

Upon reaching the space filled with air between the water and the cover, the woman released her hold on the shield around herself and the air bubble around Kid. She focused on all the water that Kid had inhaled and imagined that water warping outside his body to elsewhere. Kaito Kid suddenly starting coughing, his eyes snapping open. As his vision adjusted to the darkness, he could see the woman's hood was pulled back to reveal her blond hair and blue eyes. She sighed and stuck his drenched hat on top of his head.

"Maybe this tournament wasn't such a great idea . . ." she mumbled in her regular voice.

Kid's body felt numb and he felt a fair amount of pain. He cleared his throat with a cough and tried to speak, his voice seeming weak. "Then why did you set it up in the first place?"

The woman hesitated in answering. "Boredom. I'm sorry if it seems kind of selfish . . . Hey, can you move at all?"

"I guess," Kaito answered, half lying. His body felt heavy so it took a fair amount of effort to move at all.

"Good. I need you to hold onto me for a few seconds. I'm gonna open up the cover so we can get out." she said, raising her free hand and touching the steel cover over top of them.

"Wait," Kid said abruptly, raising his arm out of the water, "You forgot something."

Kid grabbed the woman's hood and pulled it back over her head. She stayed quiet, not knowing how to respond.

"What's the point of putting the cover back on if you reveal yourself afterwards? I mean, if you wanted you make out with me in the dark it would be understandable but since that wasn't your idea-"

" 'Aey!" the woman interrupted with a grimace and an annoyed tone, "You may be cute but I'm not THAT selfish. You nearly died! My first priority is getting you out of here alive. And I put the cover back on so _your_ identity wouldn't be blown!"

" 'Course you did," Kid laughed hoarsely, beginning to feel the cold of the water, the numbness fading away.

The woman rolled her eyes and swam over to the side, pulling Kaito Kid along with her. The cover slowly faded away once more and the two climbed out of the water, dripping wet, both secret identities still a secret to those around them.

~xxx~

"I don't get it . . ."

"Hm?"

"You say my bones could crack at the lightest hit?"

"Yeah."

"Then why are you using me as a stepladder?"

Kaito Kid sat on his hands and knees while the woman stood on his back, looking for something on a high shelf. The woman had taken her cloak off for the time being and was wearing a white dressy top and faded black jeans.

"Because," the woman began, using her regular voice as she moved stuff around on the shelf, "I'm not very heavy."

"Orly?"

"Yarly."

"Nowai."

"Yawai."

"Srsly?"

"Seriously." The woman glanced down at Kid and gave him a sour look. "Are you implying I'm heavy to you?"

"Of course not," Kid laughed. The woman sighed, grabbed a bag of chips, and stepped down onto the floor. Kaito Kid sat up normally and sighed as she sat down on the ground across from him.

"So you risked my well-being for a bag of chips?"

"Ya," the woman replied, ripping open the chips and pulling one from the bag, "Azure put them up there where I couldn't reach them. And I was too lazy to find a stool or anything."

The magician grimaced, obviously displeased. "And you couldn't make a new bag appear out of nowhere?"

"Of course not!" she said after sticking the chip in her mouth, "I need to preserve my energy for all of you guys. You could be dead right now."

Before Kid could respond, the door swung open and slammed against the wall, making the two jump in surprise. Azure walked in, dripping wet.

"Someone mind explaining THIS?" Azure said sourly, pointing at her soaked hair. The woman cracked a smile.

"Possibly. Unless, of course, the water randomly came out of the sky. Then blame Mother Nature. It's called rain, just so you know."

"Bullcrap!" Azure fumed, grabbing a towel and attempting to dry her hair, "Water doesn't just _randomly _drop on your head when you're inside a building. I call warp magic on this. And other than me, you're the only one who could be responsible."

"Hey, you're smarter than you look." She didn't bother to mention the water came from inside a human being.

The woman smiled as Azure growled, unable to think of a good comeback. Kaito Kid coughed, the other two reacknowledging his presence.

"What's he doing here?" Azure asked sourly, "Did you want to be all lovey-dovey with him in private? And didn't I tell you eating those chips would make you fat?"

"I'm not going to get fat . . ." Azure's sisterly figure muttered before speaking up, "He's here because you need to use your healing energy to help him."

"Hell no!" Azure sneered, "Besides, you know this silly tournament won't even get to the end of the semi-finals. He'll be fine until we meet up with Melody."

"Tch, fine . . ."

Kid looked at them questioningly. "What's this about the tournament finishing before the end of the semi-finals?"

Before Azure could respond with something rude, the woman cut in and said, "Don't spend too much time thinking about it. You'll see."

"That's just like the Kaitou Mistress," Kid smirked, "Always keeping secrets and surprises."

"Kaitou Mistress?" Azure scoffed.

"You're just jealous no one knows you."

The blue haired girl rolled her eyes. "Anyways, there's like, five minutes until the next match. Who do you think will win?"

The Kaitou Mistress smiled. "Silly. I _know _who's gonna win. I'll give you a hint. They have an "o" as the second letter in their name."

"But that's both of them!" Azure whined, her voice increasing by an octave. The woman laughed and put on her cloak. The two left the room, discussing something random, leaving Kaito Kid alone. Kid sighed and stood up, leaving his questions hanging as he left for the stadium.

~xxx~

Sora and Yoshi walked out onto the arena. Everyone else sat in the stands like usual and prepared themselves for the last match of the second round.

"We're finally at the last match of the second round," Azure said into the mic with a yawn, "In today's match, we have the spiky-haired kid with the giant key against the weird turtle thing."

"It's a dinosaur," the woman said with a sigh. _Not again . . ._

"Yeah, that's what I said, a turtle."

The woman sighed once more and picked at the cookie in front of her. "I'll keep today's gimmick simple. In a dozen or so seconds, a beast will appear in front of you. Whoever knocks it out first wins. Knocking your opponent out is valid as is working together. Okay, you may begin."

As soon as she finished, a shadow creature rose out of the ground. It was easily larger than the stadium. It was all black except its yellow eyes. The creature had black wings and a heart-shaped hole in the middle of its stomach area.

"Heartless . . ." Sora muttered, summoning his Keyblade, "This is gonna be fun . . ."

The boy looked over at teammate and opponent, who had already fired an egg at the giant Heartless. The attack seemed to have no effect, unfortunately. Darkside (the Heartless) punched at the ground, creating a mini-shockwave and a number of smaller Heartless to arise from the ground. Shadows.

Yoshi rolled into an egg and hurled himself at the Shadows. The ones that didn't get crushed were vanquished by Sora's Keyblade, who then proceeded to attack the Darkside's hand. Yoshi caught onto this and rolled into the hand, hoping to do some sort of damage.

The Darkside, um . . . "stood" up straight again and leaned back slightly. An orb appeared in the heart-shaped hollow and two smaller orbs shot out of it. They both flew towards Yoshi and Sora, the latter blocking it with his Keyblade and the other getting hit in the face. The orb flung back at Darkside and smacked him in the head. Two more orbs fired towards the two fighters, both either blocking it with the Keyblade or an egg. Finally, four orbs shot towards the fighters and they were all blocked once more. Each orb flew back at Darkside and hit it in the head.

This attack cycle continued for a few minutes until the giant shadow created a vortex that proceeded to suck in the fighters. The two ran in the opposite direction in fear of getting trapped until the vortex vanished. Darkside then punched both his fists into the ground and lowered his head. Shadows began emerging from the ground and leaping at the fighters, making them stumble around quite a bit. Yoshi leaped out of the way and began firing eggs at the Darkside's head, leaving Sora to fight the increasing number of Heartless.

"Thunder!" Sora shouted while pointing his Keyblade at the sky, causing thunderbolts to rain down around him. As the Heartless asploded, Sora ran towards Darkside's head and swung his Keyblade at it numerous times as eggs hit it in the head. Then like the smaller Heartless, Darkside asploded as well to a hit from the Keyblade.

"Yay, Sora wins!" the woman cheered. After lots cheering and high-fives, the woman spoke again when it quieted down.

"At around one thirty, the first match of the semi-finals will take place. Since we have an odd number of contestants, one person will fight someone self selected by me. Who it will be will be revealed at the said time so be prepared."

Chatter erupted from the fighters as they left the arena to do whatever they wanted until the said time. Azure stood up and left the announcer's booth as the woman smiled brightly at the thoughts running through her head.

~xxx~

The time between the two fights felt long and slightly suspenseful. The three semi-finalists (Natsu, Kaito Kid, and Sora) were curious to who would be fighting someone else and just who this someone else was. When the time had come, the three stood in the centre of the arena, waiting for the announcement. To their surprise, the mysterious woman warped on the arena as well, still wearing the cloak and disguising her voice. The semi-finalists stood in a line and faced her as the crowd shut up to listen.

"Hello my lucky contestants," she said, smirking to herself, "Of course, I say lucky because most of this tournament's results HAS been pure luck and chance."

Some people shifted with a grimace plastered on their face, obvious to this fact. The woman ignored them and continued.

"Since there are three of you and I don't feel like pitting you all against each other, one of you will fight someone else. Natsu?"

Natsu straightened and gave the woman a confused look. "Yeah?"

"You'll be fighting someone else. Therefore, Kaito Kid and Sora will be fighting each other. Natsu's fight will be first."

Kid got a look of realization on his face as Natsu beamed. "Hey, do I get to pick my opponent?"

The woman laughed before continuing, "Of course not. Me choosing is the gimmick this time around."

A white coloured scythe made purely of light energy appeared in the woman's hand. She pointed it at the Dragon Slayer, the scythe less than a centimetre from his nose, causing him to flinch and stumble back a bit.

"So, are you ready to battle?"

"Eh?"

"I've chosen myself to be your opponent," the woman said, gesturing to Kid and Sora to go find a seat within the crowd. The two obeyed, leaving the two fighters on the arena.

"Alright," agreed Natsu, "But on one condition."

The woman didn't seem surprised. "And that is?"

"Everyone gets to see who you really are if I win. No more secrets. And if you win-"

"Nothing changes," the woman interrupted, her hand unmoving and steady, "You have nothing I want or want to know. If I win, everything stays the way they are."

Natsu nodded and stepped back to his side of the arena. The woman lowered her arm and stepped to her side. The mic turned on and Azure's whiny voice could be heard.

"Are you _sure _you wanna do this? I mean, it's kinda dumb . . ."

"I've had this planned since the beginning and you decide to object _now?_" the woman sighed, "Honestly . . ."

"Fine, don't come crying to me when you get your ASS kicked. Ha! You didn't interrupt me this ti-"

"Just start the match already!" the woman yelled, sounding irritated.

"Yeah yeah yeah . . . ThreetwooneGO!"

The moment Azure yelled "go", the cloaked woman warped to the centre of the arena, swung her scythe at the ground, and created a massive shock wave that flew towards Natsu. He dove out of the way as another shock wave was sent towards him. Natsu jumped over the shock wave as his fist began to emit flames. He leaped towards the woman and his fist went through a shield of water and into the woman's hand. Refusing to give up, the Dragon Slayer continued to punch at the cloaked woman, who caught every punch after the flames had been put out by the water. Feeling tired of this, the woman warped behind Natsu as a vortex of wind surrounded him. Natsu starting coughing as the oxygen seemed to be thinning, the wind keeping him captured.

"Sister, that's no way to stall for time!" Azure whined, warping into the stands.

"Stall?" Sonic questioned from the stands. Everyone else seemed confused as well.

"Shush!" Azure said in a cheerful tone. She snapped her fingers and an averaged sized black and cobalt tarantula appeared on top of the hood of the woman's cloak. The wind magick dissipated, freeing Natsu, who started coughing, trying to regain his breath. He stopped himself when he noticed his opponent wasn't moving and had a giant spider on her head, which was slowly creeping down the side of her head, reaching the end of the hood.

As if on cue, a loud "BANG" rung through the air as a bullet flew past Natsu's head and hit the tarantula, causing it to fling off the woman, making her sigh in relief.

"_Haplopelma lividum," _a male voice said, wandering into the stadium with the one known as Melody. He had short spiked hair that was coloured blue and emerald green eyes. He seemed to be smiling too warmly for someone carrying a gun.

"Or, in other terms," he said, continuing his smart act, "the cobalt blue tarantula. They are fairly aggressive, have no uricating hairs, and possess a painful, dangerous bite."

The woman sighed as the guy put his arm over her shoulder. She spoke in her normal voice. "Don't be such a smart-alec . . ."

"I can't help it, my parents' named me Alec," he said warmly, pulling back the woman's hood and hugging her close, "And I can't help being smart."

"Bullcrap," the woman sighed, "You probably looked all that up on Wikipedia."

"Oh, damn, was it that obvious?" Alec laughed, "Or did Melody tell you with her super telepathic powers?"

By now, everyone had jumped down from the crowd and had gathered around in confusion and curiosity. Melody cut in with her disinterested voice, "It's nice to see you had fun with your little violent get-together, Aqua, but we really should get everyone to the mansion and answer some unanswered questions."

Aqua pulled away from Alec and took off her cloak, revealing the casual clothes underneath. She sighed, which seemed more like a sigh of relief than anything else, "Okay, whatever you say."

"Good," Melody replied, looking at the fourteen people around her. She paused at Kaito Kid and turned away after a few seconds. With a sigh, she snapped her fingers and the group was warped miles away . . .

* * *

**Alec: **BEST. ENTRANCE. EVER.

**Aqua:** Yup! That was soooo awesome~!

**Sonic:** Hey, don't flirt in front of Yoshichao. You'll make her feel bad.

*is being emo in the emo corner* ;_;

**Kaito Kid:** Too late for that . . .

**Aqua:** Ah, who cares? She can't ruin my life since she lives her fantasies through me. Nyah nyah~!

**Azure:** So she'll punish the rest of us . . .

**Aqua:** I have Alec so who cares? ^_^

**Alec:** Aww, I love you too. :p

DAMN YOU ALL! *cries*

**Melody:** *sigh* Tune in next time for pointless backstory and a plot twist. In other words, filler.

**Natsu:** Yum, filler!

**Kirby:** Puyo! (Maybe Natsu can eat the filler so Yoshichao is forced to work on actually writing the story!)

**Kaito Kid:** B-But the plot twist!

**Azure:** SCREW THE PLOT TWIST, THIS STORY SUCKS. STOP READING IT! GO AWAAAY!


	4. Decisions

Welcome back to another polished chapter of "When Worlds Collide"! After this, I'll be polishing chapter four and finishing it so YAY!

Massive changes with the dialogue, mainly Melody's. I made her more in-character and added some other dialogue tweaks. I didn't tamper with the dark section and I pretty much left the Kaito and Azure scene alone, save for one line of dialogue.

**Azure: **YAY, KID-SAMA!

**Kaito Kid:** T_T

Ehe . . . Anyways . . . GO BACKSTORY FILLER CHAPTER THINGY!

* * *

Axel wandered through his castle, ignoring the guards and servants that were - for the most part - slacking off. If he had the time, he would be blowing up at them; submerging them in acid as punishment. But fortunately for them, he was expecting someone. Someone who could help with his plan.

Maybe.

He stood in front of the large black wooden front door that led outside. Unfortunately, he was early so he began counting down from eighty to predict when the guest would arrive . . .

"_Hey, Axel!" _a familiar male voice rang out in his head, irritating him immensely, "_You still haven't told me what you're planning."_

_"Weren't you listening the other day?" _Axel mentally replied, beginning to count out loud quietly so he wouldn't lose count.

"_You blocked me from your head, remember? I have no idea what has been going on for the past three days! Do you know how _lonely _and _boring _it gets, sitting in the mind of MY OWN BODY unable to do anything?"_

"_Xavier, my good friend," _Axel replied, his tone softening, "_We are going to awaken the creator of our dear planet. The one the gods selfishly sealed away eons ago."_

"_So it was evil then?" _Xavier groaned, his tone annoying Axel, who was having trouble keeping calm.

"_Think of it this way. It created this planet and everything on it. Humans, demons, reapers . . . It intended darkness to rule and light to suffer. In other words, think of light as evil and dark as the hero in this tale. The gods he created turned on him and controlled Xalcus to their own will; letting light prevail. Wouldn't that make them the evil ones?"_

_"Um . . ."_

Axel sighed, wishing his host would just agree to make his plan run much smoother than it did. "_What's that phrase you're always muttering? "Darkness doesn't always adequate to evil just as light doesn't always bring good"? Think of it like that. Our current gods think they did the right thing but they are just prolonging the inevitable."_

_"Yeah but-"_

Xavier stopped as Axel swung the door open, revealing a boy who appeared to be in his late teens. He wore all white, accompanied by a cape, a magician-like hat, and a monocle. His arm was raised as if he was going to knock but he lowered it when he saw Axel.

Xavier was dumbstruck. "_Isn't that-"_

"Welcome!" Axel boomed, interrupting his host, hoping he'd shut up, "Your timing is incredible. Please, come in. Don't get too attached, however. You'll probably regret it."

Hesitating, the boy walked in, taking in his surroundings as Axel began to show him around his castle. The high ceilings, the large rooms, the number of bumbling guards, and the overuse of black and other dark colours were just a few things he noticed. He also had this horrible feeling of negativity surrounding him wherever he went . . .

Eventually; Axel brought the boy into the room with all the bookshelves. Most of the villains were gathered in the room, their conversations fading away after noticing Axel and the newcomer. As Axel walked to the back of the room, he spoke, his voice seeming to have a large affect on the listeners.

"I assume you are all enjoying your time here?" he began with, not bothering to look at the others to see their replies, "Anyways, I've just come to say our enemies have started making their move. Unfortunately, where they shall move first is a mystery to me and even if I did know . . ." he paused, turning to face the crowd, "Not all of you are here so there's no point in sending you out to try and defeat them."

"But what about the Elemental Orbs?" the man with the tattoo and blue hair asked, "Why don't we all go find them and take out the heroes with ease?"

The boy looked at Axel, having never heard about these orbs before. The man didn't seem to notice. "Please don't call them _heroes,"_ Axel mumbled before answering the question, "Unfortunately, when I said my host scattered the orbs, I also meant he hid them, fusing them with other powerful objects. I believe I mentioned this, no?"

A large penguin-like villain looked over to the boy, who had seemed interested in the whole situation. "And this is . . ?"

"Ah, he's a new recruit," Axel replied, glaring at the boy, who shifted slightly, feeling uneasy. "Aren't you?"

The boy nodded and straightened, putting on a perfect poker face. "Please," he began, snapping his fingers, a white dove appearing on his finger, "Call me Kaito Kid."

~xxx~

A number of people- err . . . _mammals _were gathered within a mansion, owned by Melody. The floors were made of marble and clean enough to see reflections in the entrance hall and kitchen. The television room was filled with electronics from plasma screen TVs to gaming consoles with wooden flooring. Each bedroom was made according to the occupier's interests while the kitchen was filled with delicious meals and numerous sweets. The mansion seemed to be at least six stories high.

Everyone was gathered within the kitchen, seated around the large table, eating to their heart's content. The people there were Aqua, Alec, Melody, Azure, the ten fighters (excluding Kaito Kid), and seven other people the fighters had just met. Four of them were kids at varying ages, all less than nine, however. There was the blue hair blue eyed Angel (age eight), sea blue-green haired green eyed Sarah (age six), and the blond haired green eyed dizygotic twins Winter and Cody (both age two). The other three were two teenage boys and one teenage girl. One had short brown hair and blue eyes while the other had short spiked snow white hair and green eyes. They were named Brady and Nikki respectively. The last was a fragile looking girl with silvery hair and soft blue eyes. She was a mute and was named Kassandra. While most of the males pigged out on their food, Aqua pushed the food around with her fork, not seeming very satisfied with her meal.

"Hey, why don't you have something more satisfying to eat?" Brady asked with a smirk, reaching out to get thirds on his plate, "Y'know, something better for a vampyre?"

Aqua smiled and stood up. "You are absolutely right. Fresh blood would be much more appetizing. Thanks for the idea."

She walked over to the garbage with her plate and dropped it in the bin. She walked towards Alec, dragged him out of his seat, and began to leave the room. Melody sighed and warped in front of her.

"Please, Aqua, not now. This is important."

"But I'm hungry~!" Aqua whined, pouting. The blue haired teenager hugged her from behind, smiling warmly.

Melody didn't reply and gave Aqua a calm "just-sit-and-shut-up" look. The blond teenager rolled her eyes, mumbled a small "fiiine" and dragged Alec back to the table, forcing him to sit in her chair so she could sit on his lap, getting a jealous glare from Brady. Melody closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing slowly for a moment before walking over to her seat at the table. She remained standing, sending out a telepathic message to everyone's mind, asking for their attention. It took a moment to realize where the words were coming from but they all hushed down eventually.

"I'll assume- no, I know you're all curious to as your reason of being on this planet. In short, all of our universes are being fused together by an evil Godly force. The only way to stop this is to collect the eight Elemental Orbs and use their power to lock this deity away once more. No matter how strong you were in your old world, you won't fare well here if you try to save the world yourself."

"Oh really?" Natsu burst, suddenly standing up and glaring at Melody from the other side of the table. "I bet I can take this loser on!"

Melody stepped to the side where there were no obstacles crowding up the floor space. "Okay then," she said dully, "Try to land a hit on me. If you can, you can go ahead and try to save the day yourself."

Natsu grinned and skillfully jumped over the table. He ran at Melody, who seemed to make no attempt at defending. At the last second, Natsu flung up into the air, crashing through the ceiling and multiple ceilings above that, his cries slowly dying out as he flew higher. Melody hadn't even twitched.

"Would anyone else like to object? No? Good. Now, as I was saying . . ."

Melody paused before continuing, waiting for Natsu to fall through the ceiling and land in his seat in a daze. She continued as if it never happened.

"A number of you have required an "element" upon arriving on this planet. This element is usually based upon your personality or the type of magick you are most skilled with. Some are obvious, while others must be discovered on your own. Now, these Elemental Orbs could increase your powers immensely. If it is an element you could use, of course. For example, our hotheaded friend here could use the Fire Orb but probably couldn't use the Water Orb."

Most of the Xalcians that already knew this were distracted and didn't bother to pay attention. Melody sighed and a hologram of the planet appeared in the centre of the table, causing everyone to direct their attention there.

"Eons ago, the planet you are currently on, Xalcus, was formed by a monster so powerful and feared, its creations obeyed it without hesitation. It had a twisted sense of humour and enjoyed watching the helpless get ripped to shreds gruesomely by whatever felt like feasting. You'll eventually notice that human populations here are incredibly low. In the worlds you came from, humans were most likely on the top of the food chain. Now, however, we are close to the bottom.

"Anyways, this creature created a number of the gods and goddesses that now rule this planet. They eventually stood up to it and sealed it away. A few centuries later, a young king and queen enslaved the humans on this planet. After asking for help from the Gods, they found a way to seal their spirits away. Today, their spirits reside within two of the Elemental Orbs, occasionally possessing their bearers to wreak havoc again. And now, they've found a away to free the monstrous soul locked in this planet's core."

The hologram suddenly disappeared, making everyone jump slightly. "Well, that's all you need to know for now. I assume you all want to continue eating. Aqua, Azure, mind if I speak to you two for a moment?"

The two twin-like figures stood up and left the room with Melody, both extremely confused.

"So, what's up?" Azure asked.

"One of them is missing," Melody said flatly, getting straight to the point, "Kuroba Kaito. Or, Kaito Kid, as you call him. Aqua would like to know where he is and you have the answer."

Azure let out a small "meep" as Aqua glared at her. She laughed nervously.

"Well, you see . . ."

~X~

It was about a half hour before dinner and Kaito was wandering through the mansion, looking for someone to aid him. He walked up to the third floor and bumped into Azure, who didn't seem very happy about seeing him.

"Geez, watch where you're going!" Azure whined, starting to walk around him. Kid grabbed her hand and gave it a light kiss.

"I apologize, madam. I must've been too stunned by your beauty to see where I was going."

Azure's face turned pink as she looked for her voice. She was obviously a virgin when it came to receiving compliments.

"What do you want?" she mumbled, slowly pulling her hand away.

With a poof of pink smoke, a rose appeared in Kid's hand. He handed it to Azure, who silently took it. "I just need you to answer a question. Or at least direct me to someone who will answer my question."

"Melody is good for that . . ."

"I know but she kinda scares me. So, I would like to ask you, if you wouldn't mind."

Azure hesitated then said: "Okay, ask away then . . ."

"I need someone who can inform me on the situation and help me find something. This something is extremely precious to me and would be disastrous if it fell in the wrong hands. It doesn't matter if their heart is evil. I'm good as long as they will co-operate with me."

Azure glanced at the rose and finally said, "Xavier-kun can help you. His castle is in the forest just north-east from here . . ."

Kid smimed and kissed Azure on the cheek, who couldn't stop her face from turning red. "Thank you for your help. That is exactly where I'll go."

The magician of the moonlight went back downstairs and out the front door, running in the direction he was directed. Meanwhile, Azure smiled and skipped through the mansion happily while plucking at the rose petals stuck on the flower.

~X~

". . . No, really, what's the real story?"

Aqua gave Azure a sour look, not believing a bit of her story. Melody cut in before she could protest.

"I'm afraid she's right. Her memory is fresh in her mind and sticks out like a thorn. So I assume he has already spoken with my brother or his counterpart."

"The Pandora," Aqua sighed, "that's what he's looking for. The whole "worlds colliding" thing must've worried him a bit so he wanted to find it quick . . ."

"The what?" Azure asked with a curious face.

"Nevermind," Aqua sighed, "And what happened to him being a "fake magician" and I have horrible taste in guys?"

Azure blushed and Melody cut in before she could say something rude and whiny. "We'll worry about him later," she said, not seeming to care about the topic at hand at all, "I say we start searching for the orbs before it gets late. Aqua, where would you like to venture first?"

"Uhm . . ." Aqua mumbled, not really knowing of a specific place, "Well, seeing the guests we have, there must be at least seven other worlds around here. And since Kaito-kun is gone, that leaves six to choose from. Mario's, Sonic's, Link's, Kirby's, Natsu's, or Sora and Roxas's."

Melody hesitated before speaking. "We should stick to single groups leaving at a time. The Xalcian elements may have ruined the flow of their universes when they merged together. Being the protector of Xalcus, you should accompany the groups to each world. Then the rest of the Xalcians may choose where to venture to."

Aqua smiled. "That's a good idea! I get to explore a bunch of new and interesting worlds~! So, where are we going first?"

Azure spoke up. "Well, we could always go and look for Kid-sama . . ."

The blond teenager grimaced. "Or, we could leave him for a little bit. I'm sure he'll be fine. Melody? Where do you wanna go?"

The red brunette waited a moment before answering, seeming slightly paler than usual. "I, personally, would like to see where that boy Natsu came from. From what I've seen in his memories; the "mages" in his world are extremely skilled and powerful. I ask that you wait until tomorrow for that, however. I'm not in the best condition at the moment . . ."

_Melody? Not feeling well? Did I hear that right? _"Um . . . Are you okay?" Aqua asked, growing worried.

"Of course. It's nothing a night of meditation can't cure. It might just be an incoming vision or overwhelming of new energy . . ."

"If you say so . . ." Aqua looked at Azure, who seemed to be smiling dreamily over something. "So, Azure, where would you like to go that doesn't involve Kid-kun?"

She rolled her eyes. "Pfft . . . I'll go check out the blue hedgehog's world with you. I wanna see what other talking animals there are . . ."

Melody spoke again. "There are no Elemental Orbs there but I sense plenty of unknown energy there. The same unknown energy is also scattered across the lands. If I'm right, and I usually am, these sources are emitting from powerful artifacts called the "Chaos Emeralds"."

"Fine by me," Aqua replied, returning to the noisy kitchen. The sight of everyone getting along made her smile. Most people seemed to be done eating and were now conversing.

Melody walked in and moved to an empty seat, waiting for a moment of quiet to speak. Brady was the first to notice and elbowed Nikki - who was sitting beside him - in the arm. He noticed her expression and shut up. Eventually everyone got the message and quieted down.

"Through a short talk, we've decided to travel to your worlds one by one to search for the Elemental Orbs and other power sources we must keep away from the enemy. Before you ask, the groups are going one by one because the elements of our world often don't fare well with others in other universes. Multiple creatures on our beloved planet can also only be killed by magick or other means that only we know of.

"The first place is just north-west of here, past the city. The world belongs to Sonic and Knuckles so they as well as Aqua and Azure shall head off to search there. The rest may do whatever you like until they return and the next group is sent out."

Sonic and Knuckles got up and headed for the door, followed by Aqua and Azure. The group left the mansion and headed towards the city in the north-west, oblivious to what waited them.

* * *

**Sonic:** Damn you and your filler.

**Aqua:** Why didn't Kirby or Natsu eat this?

**Natsu:** It tastes bad.

**Kirby:** Puyo puyo. (Yoshichao gave me cake.)

**L:** Did someone perhaps mention cake?

GET OUT OF HERE L, YOU'RE DEAD.

**L:** *cute thoughtful face*

Okay you can stay. :) Cake is over thar.

**Alex:** So much for being _dead._

OMG ALEX~!

**Alex:** Hello Aqua. How are you today?

**Aqua:** Pleasant. And you?

*unloved* ;_;

**Alex:** I'm rather upset I'm not "God" yet in this story. _If_ I'm even in this story.

I'M TRYING BUT I CAN'T FIND A WAY TO ADD YOU! DX

**Cody:** Good. I didn't like the bastard anyways.

**Alex:** Hello _demon_. You're just jealous I'm God.

**Cody:** And you're just jealous I'm in this story.

**Aqua:** Actually, baby Cody-kun is in this story. Teenage Cody-kun is in the sequel.

**Cody:** I'm still in the story so HA, IN YOUR FACE ALEX!

(Insert epic demon vs. God fight with lots of blood and stuff)

Err . . . SEE YOU NEXT CHAPTER! KBAI. *goes to stop the fight*


End file.
